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Friday, 29 January 2016

There’s a simple way of appealing to late-night anime
fans – get a pretty girl to act in ways that are just like a male otaku. “Look –
she’s so cute! And she’s doing all the things I do!” Well, it worked for Lucky Star.

A young salaryman called Taihei lives in his small Tokyo apartment with his
schoolgirl sister. Outwardly, she is the perfect student – model-pretty,
academically top of the class, and highly skilled at any sport she turns her
hand to. At home, however, she is a terrible slob who loves anime, games and
surfing the net – while eating sugary snacks and chugging cola. She seems
callous to her brother sometimes, but is actually devoted to him, and of course
has a variety of pretty friends with extreme character quirks that always
involve blushing, who all also become very interested in Taihei.

The usual boxes get ticked – beach trips, Valentine’s
chocolate dilemmas, sweet Christmas eve fuzziness. Umaru-chan also takes part
in video game tournaments, goes to nostalgic old stores and pontificates on the
best way to snack.

It’s brainless, formulaic and lazy, but that’s not
to say it isn’t fun and likeable. I just miss the times when anime comedies
could make me actually laugh out loud multiple times an episode, like Azumanga Daioh. I suppose Nichijou was the closest thing recently…

The key is not to follow the formula too closely, or
like Umaru-san, you get a show that’s pleasant and enjoyable but leaves very
little lasting impression.

Friday, 1 January 2016

By season 3, The Simpsons had gotten over the
wobbles of establishing a new show with a broad cast – which, it should be
noted, were remarkably minor wobbles – and settled into the best period of its
production history, which it will sustain for long enough to become the
critically-lauded definer of a generation’s pop culture that it still is. No
matter how far it has fallen.

Season three doesn’t need to establish characters or
setting any more, but the ideas it puts forward are still fresh and
interesting. It is also still possible for the celebrity cameos to be a
surprise. Season opener ‘Stark Raving Dad’, with an inspired bit of meta humour
in its casting of Michael Jackson as an asylum internee who only believes he is
Michael Jackson, perfectly encapsulates this.

There are plenty more celebrity cameos, including a
long list of baseball stars all at once, as well as great little appearances by
Aerosmith and Spinal Tap, but it is of course the deepening of the characters’ personalities
and relationships that make this season work well. Flanders already begins to really get
fleshed out with his venture into left-handed entrepreneurship – also giving
Homer some much-needed humanity in the days before he’s simply put forward as
some kind of psychopath. Moe has his defining episode in the highlight episode ‘Flaming
Moe’s’. Krusty and Sideshow Bob both get episodes that build upon what we’ve
already seen of their personalities beyond the surface, and flashback episodes
of Homer and Marge show that no matter how dysfunctional they can be and how nightmarish
they were at that work party way back at the beginning of season 1, they have a
lot in their lives that is in fact enviable and adorable.

There are some episodes that stretch the characters.
Bart sometimes goes too far in torturing others, to the extent that he becomes
hard to forgive, like when he toys with Mrs. Krabappel. Homer being tempted
into another affair in Colonel Homer both seems over-familiar from earlier
episodes and shows him being a little too oblivious and insensitive, even if he
ends up making the right decisions.

But this season more than any other makes
the Simpson family seem relatable and likeable even to watchers who in all
honesty are very little like these people. And that, I guess, is the most
impressive thing that The Simpsons manages to pull off.

Welcome to Adziu's small corner

Welcome to my little blog, here in this small corner.
Over the years I have seen a few hundred animated series and movies, and the purpose of this blog is to house my impressions. This is not intended to be a daily blog with impressions of each episode: I write my thoughts only after viewing something complete. Several have been imported from previous blogs dating back to 2005 - as well as drawing from journals from as early as 1999!
Now, please do sit, enjoy the fire, have a mug of something warm and put in a comment or two.